


all seedless in the light

by endofmeandeverything



Series: A Place Apart [3]
Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: AU, Gen, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 09:23:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4132267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofmeandeverything/pseuds/endofmeandeverything
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lee meets a new friend in an unlikely place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all seedless in the light

The day was as rainy as it ever was in late spring and while Ian bemoaned the damp and the effect it had on his wares, Lee loved the smell.  It seeped under the old door of the shop, sunk into the front paneling, and stirred up the scent of aging paper and ink.  The streets were still dry outside, but that wouldn’t last long.  There was a six-pack of beer in his small fridge, and leftover marinara from dinner the night before calling his name.

 “Please tell me you aren’t still holing yourself up in your flat all weekend?”  Ian arched one eyebrow at him, his glasses sliding down his nose.

Lee knew the guilty look on his face gave him away.  He ducked behind the stack of books still to be shelved.  The clock—notoriously slow—over the counter in back told him it was nearly nine o’clock and almost an hour past closing time and definitely, considering his eleven-hour day, not the time to start a pub crawl.

“What’s the point of travelling the world if all you do is stay home?”  The man seemed to be staring at him even as his pen raced through his books.  Lee smiled; he liked Ian, whose modern views on the world and enthusiasm for nighttime adventures contrasted with his outdated recordkeeping.  “Honestly, Lee, you ought to get out more.”

“Maybe if my boss didn’t work me to the bone,” Lee teased.  He carefully replaced an original copy of Auden.  A pen went skittering across the floor near his feet.

“Find a boss who hires ex-pats without work Visas and pays under the table!”

Lee just shook his head and laughed.  “And rents the place above the shop for insanely cheap to the same stupid American who showed up at Heathrow with no plan,” he said.  Fifteen minutes, he decided, then he’d be off to the corner shop to pick up noodles and back to his apartment to cook and watch TV and sleep.  With a few shorts months of Ian’s friendly concern under his belt, Lee knows just how to redirect the conversation from his lack of a social life.

“I’ve never seen you leave.  You’re here when I come in.  Do you sleep behind that desk of yours?”  Two more books to go, both on the top shelf.  Ian claimed to have hired him simply because he didn’t have to use the ladder to get to the highest shelves and Ian wanted to be rid of the thing that took up much-needed floor space in the cramped shop.

“Watch your mouth, mister, or I’ll wash it out with soap.”

“Your American accent is horrible.  And my mother never washed my mouth out with soap.”

Ian smiled and removed his glasses.  He reached into the cash drawer and counted out a roll of notes, which he handed over.  “Fuck off, Lee, and I’ll see you in the morning.  If you don’t come back with your brains shagged out or a terrible hangover, you’re fired.”

“Yeah, yeah, and then who’ll dust the shelves?”

“The mice of course.”  Ian sniffed.  “Now go, go!”

Outside the street lamps were glowing softly, illuminating twisting coils of fog that rolled across the street.  The stars were blotted out by heavy clouds that threatened to open at any moment, and Lee briefly considered returning for an umbrella before deciding the corner store was close enough to risk a run.

The girl behind the counter was young, her bright purple headphones turned up so loud that Lee could her the rattle of her music, her nose perpetually buried in a book.  He’d never succeeded in getting her attention and, if he had looser morals, probably could have gotten away with shoplifting everything he’d ever purchased from the store.  He never bothered with trying anymore, simply dropped exact change on the counter and left.  As he left, a young girl nearly ran into him headlong and continued into the store without so much as an apology, headed straight for the milk at the back.

Being ignored brought on another surge of homesickness.  It had been happening more often recently, the loneliness and yearning for his mother’s drooping couch and beef stew overwhelming him at the strangest times.  The other day a waft of a man’s perfume had reminded him of his father.  He’d left a message on his sister’s phone last week and then again a few days ago, but no response.  She was probably busy, Lee told himself, and hadn’t he assured everyone that he’d be fine?  The radio silence from his family only made things worse, much as Ian tried to distract him with endless menial tasks and gentle teasing about getting laid.

Not for the first time since the novelty of England had worn off, Lee considered going home, but his pride wouldn’t let him back out of his global trek merely two months into the thing.  He wasn’t sure what he was trying to prove to himself, but he was pretty sure it he was being stupid.  His mother had always said that had never stopped him before, so he bought his noodles and hoped the jar of marinara in the fridge was still good.  He stepped outside to find the rain still holding off, though the street was nearly vacated by people with homes to go to and dinner to be had.

Lee didn’t want to go back to his empty apartment.  He didn’t want to sit up with Ian drinking tea and poring over the finer points of Shakespeare.  He didn’t want to sit alone in a corner in a pub and watch men choose more cheery prey for a quick night of pleasure.  He’d tried smiling more, but apparently acting wasn’t his forte.

His eye was drawn to the cemetery across the street.  It was tiny but beautiful; it made Lee wish he had some talent in photography.  Spanning barely a city block, with missing and dilapidated tombstones, it made Lee wish he had some talent for photography.  Ian said it remained untouched only because it was privately owned by a family whose love of history was greater than their love of the money to be made for selling small plots on the outskirts of London.  To Lee it looked like a piece of the past sitting dead in the middle of busy streets, vacant and invisible to the people who puttered by on a daily basis.

Tonight the place drew him.  His own gloomy mood and the cliché of visiting the place made him smile.  At least he’d be in good company.

There was no gate, nor any path through the overgrown plot.  Headstones and other markers lay scattered as if at random amid stunted birch and looming willow, obscured by tall grasses and blooming bushes.  White flowers pulled free by the rain lay scattered in a winding trail that led further and further from the street.  The darkness was almost complete as the cover of trees shrouded both the streetlights and the moon overhead.  Lee whistled in admiration, and a shadowed figure swung up beside him.

“Jesus Christ!”  Lee staggered back and fell flat on the ground, heart pounding as the figure reached out arms toward him.

“Sorry, so sorry,” came a voice.

It was a man, tall and broad-shouldered, who leaned down to help Lee up but stopped mid-way.  He froze, staring down, and Lee huffed and got to his feet himself.  He brushed damp grass from his backside.  “You scared the living daylights out of me,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” the man muttered, ducking his head.  “I didn’t mean to.”

He was handsome enough, Lee thought longingly, with blue eyes and a stern mouth.  He certainly didn’t look like a mugger, but who knew?  This place was almost always empty, and it was dark, and Lee was alone.  No mugger apologized, anyway.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.  Immediately he regretted his rudeness.  Perhaps the man had family buried here, though it didn’t seem likely considering the age of the place.  “Sorry.”

The man only smiled in acceptance of the apology.  “I could ask you the same question.  Making a special visit?”

“Not particularly.”  Lee grinned and rubbed the back of his head.  “Being morbid, I guess.  Sorry if I disturbed you.”

“Truth be told, I was doing the same thing.  I’m Richard, by the by.”  They shook hands in a loose clasp, as though they were friends.  The shy smile leveled up at him seemed almost familiar.

“Lee.”

“American?  What are you doing in London?”  Richard shoved his hands into his pockets.  His gaze was steady and piercing, as though he could see right through Lee to the things that made him up.

“Truth be told,” Lee teased, “I have no idea.  I think it’s being foolish before I’m too old to have an excuse.”  Was he flirting with a stranger in the middle of a graveyard?

The wind picked up.

“Traipsing around Europe?”  Richard’ smile seemed sad.  He shrugged his coat more tightly around him as the branches overhead rustled.  “How are you finding it?”

“Cold,” Lee quipped.  “This wind bites right through you, huh?”

Richard hummed in agreement and Lee, dispossessed of his loneliness by this sudden encounter, spoke without thinking.  “Bet my apartment’s warmer.”  He wanted to swallow the words almost as soon as they’d been freed: what was he thinking?  His place was a mess, and he was pretty sure he hadn’t done laundry since he’d been here.  There was probably dirty underwear in the middle of the floor, and the remains of his dinner still in the sink.  Despite his embarrassment, Lee couldn’t bring himself to take back the invitation.

No immediate answer was forthcoming.  Richard gazed at him, face unreadable, head tilted.  He stood eerily still, a shadow among shadows, only the sharp line of his jaw and luminous eyes clearly visible.  He seemed wan, tired as he looked Lee over.

The wind whined and blew the little white flowers overtop of his feet, and he cleared his throat and tried not to be disappointed.  He opened his mouth to apologize for being presumptuous, but Richard interrupted him.

“You live far from here?”

“Almost across the street, actually.”  Lee swallowed hard, thinking of the silent girl behind the counter and the people in the street who passed him without so much as a nod.  He’d been warned about traveling abroad, that non-Americans weren’t prone to chatting with strangers, but weeks without so much as a smile had made Lee desperate.  “I can’t promise anything fancy, but there is instant coffee.”  He chewed his lip while Richard chewed over his proposition.  “Or beer.  Um.”

“It’s a good night to be in.”  It wasn’t as enthusiastic an answer as Lee was hoping for, but Richard looked just as miserably lonely as he felt, and misery loved company: it was better than nothing.

Relief flooded in; Lee expelled it in an embarrassing sigh.  He wished he could stop rubbing at his hair.  It was probably all standing on end now.

Richard seemed to know the way out of the tangled brush by heart, holding up low-hanging branches and skirting crumbled or falling tombstones with ease even in the dark.  The rush of rain drips through even the heaviest foliage, rattling the brush and soaking their hair.  Richard sweeps little pools from the tops of markers as they walk, head bowed, into the light of the street.  The rain or the darkness had nearly emptied the streets, though light still shone from the corner shop.

Richard’s demure pose and the slump of his shoulders struck a chord in Lee’s own heart.  The dark figure, alone beneath a flickering streetlamp, looking beseechingly over his shoulder for direction, seemed a reflection of the emptiness in Lee’s own heart.  He swallowed the urge to reach out and take that broad hand in his own.  “Just this way,” he murmured, taking the lead.

The window displays in the The Wide World were just as dusty as they were when Lee left, but the shop itself was darkened.  Perhaps Ian had gone home after all, or perhaps they’d creep through the shelves and find him sleeping with his glasses still on his face and ink on his cheek.  The thought made Lee smile as he turned the key in the lock and gestured Richard in.

The man stood still on the street, staring uneasily at Lee.  “You live in a bookshop?” he asked.

“No, above.  Ian—the owner—rents to me, and I dust off his collections and run for his lunch.”  Lee shrugged in self-effacement.  “It hardly seems fair, does it, but he hasn’t kicked me to the curb yet, so here I am.”

Richard swallowed and gave a strained smile.  For a moment Lee thought the sight of the door had brought his senses back to him.  Somehow he didn’t seem the sort of man that went home with strangers.  But he didn’t turn away or make his excuses, breathing out through his nose and brushing against Lee’s coat as he passed into the shop.  “I love the way it smells in here,” he murmured.  He swept the dust from aging spines with the same tender care as he had swept raindrops from granite and Lee ached to feel the same touch against his own skin.  Even just a brush of the hand would fill so much emptiness.  Lee almost reached out.  “It’s like memory.”

“It is.”  Lee followed his meandering path through the shelves, noting his pause and his slow smile as he touched the closed accounts books still resting on the counter.  “Much as I complain, I love it here.”

Richard turned sharply to him.  “Do you?”  His expression was so serious that Lee knew his answer would be weightier than a simple yes or no.

“I do,” he said.  He swallowed, and those blue eyes followed the line of his throat.  “It’s hard to be lonely when you’ve got…” he gestured broadly at the tomes lining the shelves, “all these folks to keep you company.”   It didn’t sound as genuine or as intelligent as he imagined it would.  Lee turned away, but felt a hand touch his shoulder.

“Are you?  Lonely, I mean.”

Lee swallowed and smiled.  “Sometimes.  But there’s Ian and….”  He sighed heavily.  “I suppose I am.”

“It must be hard,” Richard murmured.  A calloused thumb moved against the tendon straining in Lee’s throat and he stood frozen.  “Being alone here.  Being new.”

“I suppose.”

The light was hardly enough to see by, by the air was warm and heavy and dry and the silence and air between them seemed eaten up by the weight of a hand against his throat.  “Should we go up?” he asked finally, unable to look away from Richard’s face.  There were secrets there, he was sure, that the night would reveal.

“Richard?”

The spell was broken by Ian’s entrance.  There was a young man behind him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, staring at them both.

“What are you doing here?”

Richard dropped his hand and for just a moment Lee well and truly hated Ian.  But only for a moment; his genial smile (impossible to resist and the culprit of many of Lee’s long hours climbing up and down ladders for belligerent academics who wanted _the other one_ , _the 1929, what use is the 1922?_ ) made its appearance. 

“Lee invited me.  Is this your new slave?”  The smile Richard turned to him made his heart skip a beat.

There was a flash that left white lights in Lee’s eyes, and the young man behind Ian lowered the camera from his face.  “There’s another one?” he asked.  He raked a handful of curls out of his face.  “Is this the new one you were talking about?  Hi, Rich.”

Ian tutted as if the comment were of no accord, but Lee didn’t miss the way his foot came down heavy on the young man’s own.  “Aidan, don’t be rude,” he said.

“The new one what?” Lee asked.  Ian winced and shot a baleful look at Aidan.

Richard seemed surprised.  He looked from Ian to Lee and then back again.  “He doesn’t know?”

“You didn’t know when I met you, either, my boy.”  The small shop suddenly seemed oppressively tight rather than pleasantly intimate.

“Know _what_?” Lee demanded.  The weighty glances the others exchanged and the pity that had replaced empathy in Richard’s eyes kindled indignation in him.

The chipper tone in which Aidan answered his question made the words almost impossible for Lee to digest.  “That you’re dead of course.”

Silence reigned for a moment as Lee mouthed blankly.  “What?”

Ian sighed and shook his head.  “You could have phrased that more delicately.”

When Lee turned a questioning gaze on him, Richard turned away and refused to speak.  Annoyed, Lee said: “Are you nuts?”

No one answered.  Lee had the insane urge to stomp his feet or throttle one of them until they began to laugh.  No one moved.

When Ian spoke, it was with a gentleness that should have been reserved for a wake.  “Why don’t we all go in back and I’ll get a kettle on.  Richard, could you lock up?”

 

“I meant to tell you in good time, my dear boy.”

The tea sitting on the coffee table seemed ridiculous now. Two of the four cups had gone as cold as Lee’s insides.  “I’m not dead,” Lee said.  “It’s impossible.”

“I’m afraid not,” Ian murmured.  He reached across the table to take Lee’s hand, but Lee pulled away.  He didn’t want to be touched, afraid that perhaps the hand would pass straight through his own and that he wouldn’t feel a thing.  “It isn’t so bad, is it?  You could have wandered for years, decades even, where there are no Seers and been alone without knowing why.”

“I can’t be dead,” Lee repeated for what must have been the tenth time.  He couldn’t stand to look at Richard, whose face held only pity and an understanding of the forced, unwelcome truth making its home in Lee’s breast. 

“They all say that,” Aidan said.  He received another kick for his troubles and yelped in protest. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.  And I’m sorry for you.”

“It’s impossible,” Lee said again.  “I’m just….”

Richard interrupted the circuitous conversation.  “When did you get here?”

“I came—”  Lee stopped.  He thought.  A hazy recollection of his childhood remained, nothing more than distant faces with indistinct features, a hum of unfamiliar voices with loving intonations, dreams of schooling—had he gone?—and fear filled every vacant recollection.  “I came from…from….”

“What’s your mother’s name?  Your father’s?”  The questions seemed cruel, delivered in a curt tone at odds with the gentleness directed at him earlier.

“I….”  Lee strained, throat contracting, and saw Ian look away as his face laid bare the struggle.  “She was….”

“How did you meet Ian?”

Hazy tangled thoughts wound around his mind, a tangle of string with no end in sight and no knots to undo, only an endless search for somewhere to begin.  They were staring at him, all staring at him, as if they could see his desperate search and knew better than he how vain it was.  The clock on the wall ticked, every flicker of the second hand resounding in the stillness of the air.

“I can’t remember!”  Lee shouted, leaping to his feet.  “I can’t remember, all right?”

Richard ducked his head.  “I know,” he murmured.  He reached up, unseeing, to take Lee’s hand and pull him back into his seat.  Lee wanted to resist, but his knees gave out and he collapsed heavily, shaking hard.  “I know.”  The hand around his wrist tightened; a thumb smoothed over the place where his pulse shoulder be thundering.  “It will come back, Lee, I promise.  You might even remember how you—came to be like this.”

“How I died?”  Lee spat.  “You’re all trying so hard to convince me of it.”

“It’s true,” Richard murmured.  He still hadn’t let go.  “I saw it immediately.  I thought you knew.  I thought perhaps you were visiting your own—” He hesitated.  “I’m sorry.  Some of us do visit our remains, some of us aren’t quite…quite separated from who we were before.  Sometimes visiting helps ground the memories.  I know it helped for me, once I remembered how I passed on.”

Lee was flush and filled with spite and disbelief that battled the awful finality in all their faces.  “And how did you die?  Jump off a bridge?”

Aidan’s eyes widened again.

“Lee!”  Ian’s voice was sharp.  “Don’t be rude!” 

The fury racing through him was doused with embarrassment and grief.  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.  “Sorry.  I didn’t mean it.”

Richard only hushed Ian and patted his hand.  “Yes you did.  And it’s no matter.  It was an accident.  I’ve come to terms with it.”

The grandfather clock near the window ticked slowly and steadily as time pushed forward.  Finally Lee mustered the courage to ask: “And does everyone?  Will I?”

“Not everyone does,” Ian said.  “With help, most do.  In all my years as a Seer I’ve only had two failures, my mother only one.  You see them, lost ones, the ones who had no hand to guide them through the gateway, and it’s terribly sad.  No one can make you accept it, Lee, but I can see in your eyes you already do.”

“Come now, it isn’t so bad,” Aidan added.  “You’ve got friends.  You’ve got us, haven’t you?  There’s even this weird group, like AA.  They should call it HA, I think.  Haunts Anonymous, you know, for people who’re newly passed over—”

A hysterical laugh stopped in Lee’s throat.

Ian sighed.  “Aidan, that’s quite enough.”

Lee was inclined to agree.  He wasn’t sure what was so humorous about the situation.

“Richard knows best how you feel now, dear Lee, so we’ll leave you be.”  He groaned and hauled himself to his feet, motioning for Aidan to follow him.  As he passed behind the couch he laid a hand on Lee’s shoulder and it did not sink through.  “You are not alone.”

When the door closed, Lee muffled a sob in his hand.  It was too much to take in, but the ugly weight of truth wouldn’t be dislodged and dragged him deeper into black despair.

“How do I do this?” he muttered, pressing his face into his hands.  He felt Richard settle beside him, the presence of a hand not bold enough to descend hovering over his own.

“With help, of course.  You have Ian, and Aidan.  And his friend Dean, when he can get away from his day job.”  He hesitated.  “And me, of course.  You don’t have to do it alone.”

“Do what?”

“Stay.  Move on.  Whatever you choose.”

“You stayed.”  Lee sat back.  He drew his lip between his teeth.  “Why?  Or is that a rude question, too?”

Richard smiled and shook his head.  “It’s not.  I stayed to help others.  People like you.  Lost ones.”

“But why?”

“Because Ian helped me.  Because I’m not ready to move on yet.”  Richard shrugged and sat back, companionably close.  He bumped their shoulders together, then laced his fingers through Lee’s.  Their hands looked solid enough where they rested between their thighs.  How was it possible still to feel if he wasn’t even extant anymore?  How to eat, drink, think?  How did he feel the cold and the rain and the hurt when no one spoke to him?  How to go on when everyone looked through him?  How to leave strangled messages to his family and know that all they would hear would be static?  That they would think him cold in the ground?  To know that what he had been _was_ actually cold in the ground?  He wished he were alone so he could have a good cry, or a good scream: the urges were equally strong.

“And Lee?”  He shook his head, still too dazed to think properly. Richard squeezed his hand.  “We’ll find out what happened to you.  When we’ve got it all sorted you can move on.  To whatever’s next.”

“’We’?”

There was no hint of sadness in Richard’s smile this time.  “We.” 

People always said that blue eyes were cold, that death was cold, but Richard was steady beside him and some kind of warmth kindled between them. 

“And what if I don’t want to move on?” he asked.  Such a stupid question shouldn’t have come out sounding like a bad pick-up line.  Hope he thought he’d never feel again came alight beneath that gaze.

Richard only laughed, sweetly and softly.  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Our Eunuch Dreams" by Dylan Thomas.


End file.
